Editing is not just finding and correcting spelling and grammatical errors. In looking to hire an editor, be sure to figure out which purpose you are hiring them for. Different types and levels of editing call for editors who charge different rates, or require different amounts of time and levels and kinds of expertise (and eye, or ear). For an excellent essay on what magazine and literary editors do (acquiring pieces for publication), and why, read "No" by Brian Doyle (Kenyon Review, Spring 2008).

What an editor charges depends very much on what the local market will bear, but a proofreader will generally charge less than a copyeditor, who will typically charge less than a substantive editor, who will generally charge less than a writer. Book publishers tend to pay on the low side. Technical and marketing copy command higher rates than other copy, for different reasons (the technical writer must be able to make the meaning clear without changing it; the editor of marketing copy must aim for the best "selling" copy, which requires a different kind of flair). Experience and expertise count for a lot, so an editor with a law degree, for example, can expect to be paid more for more editing legal documents. Good judgment, common sense, and a deep and wide enough knowledge either to spot errors or to know when to check things out are important skills in an editor. Tact in editing will help you keep clients returning with more work.

That editing is valued less than it used to be is apparent in this bit of news: New York Times Will Offer Employee Buyouts and Eliminate Public Editor Role (Daniel Victor, NY Times, 5-31-17) 'In a memo to the newsroom, Dean Baquet, the executive editor, and Joseph Kahn, the managing editor, said the current system of copy editors and backfielders who assign and shape articles would be replaced with a single group of editors who would be responsible for all aspects of an article. Another editor would be looking over their shoulders before publication. Our goal is to significantly shift the balance of editors to reporters at The Times, giving us more on-the-ground journalists developing original work than ever before."'

 Omission (John McPhee, New Yorker, 9-14-15) Choosing what to leave out. About writer-editor relations (in his life) and about writing as a chiseling away of what isn't needed.
 Book Indexes  Part 1: Basic Vocabulary (Ζlfwine Mischler's excellent introduction to the how-to's of editing, An American Editor, 5-21-18)
 How Nan Talese Blazed Her Pioneering Path through the Publishing Boys Club (Evgenia Peretz, Vanity Fair, 3-29-17)
 Veteran Editor Robert Gottlieb on Working With Words (Chris Knutsen, Gottlieb's long-time assistant, Wall Street Journal, 9-13-16) In his new memoir, Avid Reader, former New Yorker editor Robert Gottlieb distills lessons from a lifetime of reading and writing. He considers editing a "service job and says that ego should never get the better of the process. Theres this pernicious phrase that editors use in publishing: My book. But its not your book. Its the authors. Editing, he says, is about surrendering to the text. Whatever a book needs is discoverable in its pages, and woe to the editor who turns elsewhere for inspiration."
 Slang for the Ages (Kory Stamper, Opinion, NY Times, 10-3-14) "English is fluid and enduring: not a mountain, but an ocean. A word may drift down through time from one current of English (say, the language of World War II soldiers) to another (the slang of computer programmers). Slang words are quicksilver flashes of cool in the great stream."
 Measuring Readability: A Secret Skill for Copyeditors (Samantha Enslen, Copyediting, 10-20-16) Flesch-Kincaid (and other readability meters) look at something copyeditors dont: average word length and average sentence length.
 The Accidental Life: An Editor's Notes on Writing and Writers by Terry McDonell, about which see Boozing with George Plimpton, Golfing with Hunter S. Thompson: The Life and Times of Terry McDonell (Alexander Nazaryan, Newsweek, 8-2-16) "The Accidental Life is about what he has done, which is to say pretty much everything one could have hoped to in the magazine world of late 20th-century America. He edited and befriended most of the alpha males of a muscular brand of journalism that flowed from the American West to midtown Manhattan.... In this time of smaller and smaller newsrooms, his tales of media-world excesses are amusing, a dispatch from a distant planet....McDonell acknowledges mistakes, as well as the shortcomings of the magazine industry."
 The value of a light touch and other lessons from the Comma Queen (Matthew Crowley, Aces, 5-12-15). A review with content. "The point of having something read by an editor, she argues, is making sure the writing doesnt stick out like a tag on a shirt, unless its supposed to."
 Online Tutorials on Proofing and Copy Editing (mostly for beginning editors, or editors who need a little training)
 5 essentials to bridging the gap between experienced editors and inexperienced writers (Tom Mangan, Verb Nerd Industries, 2-2-13)
 Poise, Tenacy, and Clancy: An Interview with Deborah Grosvenor (Michael Neff, Algonkian Writer Conferences) When Tom Clancy's first novel was submitted to the Naval Institute Press, it needed a lot of work, but editor (now agent) Grosvenor moved quickly to help Clancy improve the novel, hoping to snap it up before the major trade publishers snapped him up. About editing as acquisition, as shaping the book, and as capitalizing on good news to market a book.
 Editing Fiction. Links to excellent pieces by Carolyn Haley and others on editing fiction on Rich Adin's 'An American Editor' blog
 Gottlieb Explores Editing and Writing Biography. the editors relationship to a book should be an invisible one. "It means helping the author fulfill his or her intentions, not imposing your own ideas. Of course editors may have their own notions about a subject, but theyre there to supplement, not contradict. What can help a biographer, I think, is the editors curiosity about the subject, leading to questions that may prompt useful paths for the author to explore. Its all too easy when writing on a subject about which youre obsessive to forget that the reader may need more grounding that you have to gently set the stage."
 Robert Gottlieb, The Art of Editing No. 1 (Paris Review interview by Larissa MacFarquhar, Fall 1994). She interviews both Gottlieb and many of the fine authors he has edited--especially interesting about the editing process.
 The Robert Gottlieb Guide to Editing, My Personal Notes (Matt Gartland highlights the main points of the excellent Paris Review Art of Editing interview-- see previous entry.)
 Editor in the spotlight (William Skidelsky, Guardian blog, 1-23-07) " In the internet age, this kind of public feedback [Comments] has largely replaced the old-fashioned, private art of editing. Is that a bad thing?"Admitting mistakes to authors. Should you?
 Say you're sorry (John E. McIntyre, You Don't Say blog, April 2010). Skip the "If I offended anyone" bit.
 Pretty Apologies: For When You're Really Wrong (Carol Fisher Saller, The Subversive Copyeditor, 4-20-11).

 Academic Editing Basics (Adrienne Montgomerie, Copyediting, 12-5-16) Part of a series on editing academic works, which include articles for academic journals, theses, and monographs.
 Academic Editing, Beyond Language (Adrienne Montgomerie, Copyediting, 12-19-16)
 Getting Work in Academic Editing (AM, Copyediting, 1-9-17)
 How to Hire & Work With an Academic Copyeditor (Wendy Laura Belcher). In which we learn about "correlation editing," which involves "checking related parts of the manuscript against each other...an extremely important step in academic copyediting and a frequently overlooked one.... Correlation editing includes checking cross-references to pages, tables or charts, maps, captions, endnotes, subheads, as well as checking all citations in the text with those in the references, and all titles and authors with those in the table of contents."
 Editing the Academic Voice (Adrienne Montgomerie, Copyediting, 1-23-17)

There are few efforts more conducive to humility
than that of the translator trying to communicate
an incommunicable beauty.  Edith Hamilton
Interpreters translate spoken language, from one language to another (which may include sign language). Translators do the same with written material.

"Cost. Quality. Speed.
Pick any two." ~ An old business maxim, never truer than with editing

Whatever you charge, but especially if you charge by the page, be sure to define what a page" is. The standard page is 250 words or 1,800 characters.

What an editor charges depends very much on what the local market will bear, but a proofreader will generally charge less than a copyeditor, who will typically charge less than a substantive editor, who will generally charge less than a writer. Book publishers tend to pay on the low side. Technical and marketing copy command higher rates than other copy, for different reasons (the technical writer must be able to make the meaning clear without changing it; the editor of marketing copy must aim for the best "selling" copy, which requires a different kind of flair). Experience and expertise count for a lot, so an editor with a law degree, for example, can expect to be paid more for more editing legal documents. Good judgment, common sense, and a deep and wide enough knowledge either to spot errors or to know when to check things out are important skills in an editor. Tact in editing will help you keep clients returning with more work.

 Tip of the Week: What a Copyeditor Earns (Erin Brenner, Copyediting, 3-13-12) Discusses U.S. rates.
 Tip of the Week: More Copyeditor Earn Rates (Brenner, Copyediting, 3-20-12). Discusses rates in England, Ireland, and Canada.
 What a copyeditor charges (Copyediting, 10-22-13) Includes rates for Content Development & Management, 2012, copyediting rates, 2012.
 Common editorial rates (Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA), with "typical pace, per page"). Definitely on the low side (and for beginners on the high side), writes An American Editor (Rich Adin, 4-6-15).
 Business of Editing: The Quest for Rate Charts (Rich Adin, An American Editor, 4-6-15). "There is nothing more sure than that today someone will ask 'What should I charge [or pay]?' and someone will reply 'Take a look at the EFA rate chart.' I think the publication of this chart is a great disservice to editorial freelancers."
 Folio's Five-Year Editorial Salary (infographic for 2008-2012, for top three editorial management levels, at consumer magazines, business-to-business magazines, and association magazines)
 Medievalist or Futurist? (Rich Adin, An American Editor, 9-18-13). An excellent essay on the shift away from the (good old) "medievalist" days when editing was done mostly locally, mostly on paper, and editing was viewed more as a craft than a business, the primary concern being the quality of the work. The "Medievalist says editing is a business, but really means it is a craft and she is an artisan, not a business person," writes Adin. By contrast, the "Futurist's" view of editing is developing at a time when it is not unusual for the editor to be hired by a third-party, the packager who has won the contract to provide editorial and production services, and who has to use a hybrid system: offshore for the production component, onshore for the editorial component." With contracts won by low bids, the editor ends up with lower pay than ever and has to master efficiencies of editing. As the trend toward outsourcing continues, editors have to think more like businesses. Adin's conclusion: "We need to remember and enforce with our clients that of the three key editing virtues  low price, fast speed, high quality  they can have any two, but not all three. We need to remember ourselves that, on any given project, we can only provide two of the three."
 Quoting for the customer  ballpark prices and the editorial freelancer: Part 1 (Louise Harnby, Proofreader's Parlour, 7-5-16) She's testing an instant fee quotation service to see if it leads to more clients--and to avoid spending time with clients who won't be able to afford her; she quotes others advising to stop wasting time on estimates. "Because I ask the customer to text me with a short description, a deadline and a word count, and because my ballpark spreadsheet and the formulae therein reflect these variances, I am able to respond quickly with estimates that I have confidence in." She discusses the variances that can slow a proofreading project down. In Part 2 she examines valid concerns: the time it takes to give advice, the fact that you might be shutting the door to negotiations and the chance to prove your value and explain your process. She also talks about the types of proofreading projects it might work for. With a ballpark estimate, "you made no effort to tell the client, through testimonials, through photographs, through stories, about your firm. How it operates. What makes it different. How delighted past customers have been with your work. How you have many repeat clients who will never work with another contractor as long as you are in business." Two pieces worth reading, for proofreaders (whose work is more straightforward than an editor's).
 Ballpark Quoting for Copyediting (Rich Adin, On Ethics, The Business of Editing, An American Editor, 6-8-16). Adin, whose projects are long and complex, argues that Louise Harnby's approach to ballpark quoting might be applicable to some types of proofreading but not at all to editing, where you need to see the kind of material you'll be working with before you estimate a fee.
 On Ethics: The Ethics of Ballpark Quoting  A Rebuttal (Louise Harnby, An American Editor, 6-20-16) Clearly,, there is disagreement on this topic, but Louise's post is persuasive to me--for proofreading in particular.
 Business of Editing: What to Charge (Part I) (Rich Adin, An American Editor, 8-513). "Effective hourly rate, or EHR, explained." See also Part II, why to define a ms. page, why to charge by page or project rather than hour; Part III (tracking the EHR); Part IV (further explanation of the EHR); and Part V (why bother?)
 Keys to a Project Quote (I) (Rich Adin, The Business of Editing, An American Editor, 9-16-15) on the required Effective Hourly Rate (rEHR), the churn rate, and calculating words to a page. And Keys to a Project Quote (II) (9-21-15 -- how the style guide used can slow you down, if the client's schedule matches your rEHR and time available, calculating the time required, and never going below your rEHR (required time to edit a particular ms.).
 How Many Pages an Hour Do You Edit? (Rich Adin, An American Editor, 4-13-16) That rate is meaningless without knowing if for a particular project it's developmental editing or copyediting, how many passes you will do, whether it includes coding or styling or fact-checking, whether references are included (and do you format or verify them) , what constitutes a "page," what kind of ms it is, how well written it is, what the client expects, how well you edit, and so on.
 The Standard Editing Workday & Workweek (Rich Adin, The Business of Editing, An American Editor, 3-16-16) Adin defines his standard workday and workweek, and everything that exceeds that calls for additional compensation. Yours may differ, but read about his and calculate accordingly. Clients can be "made aware that there needs to be a balance between schedule, fee, and quality."
 Salary Calculator (Robert Half, The Creative Group, "Moolah Palooza"). (Through which in Dec. 2014 I learned that the salary range for an experienced copyeditor for Bethesda, MD, is $71,280 - $98,340.)
 8 Reasons Why Editors Are Underpaid (Rich Adin, The Business of Editing, An American Editor, Part I, 4-20-16). With the rest of the reasons in Part II, 4-27-16).
 Going, Going, Gone (Rich Adin, An American Editor, 6-3-15) "...ease of entry into the profession ... has led to a significant increase in the number of minimally qualified editors who are willing to work for ever lower amounts....How do we determine in advance that editor A will catch all misspellings but not all cliches whereas editor B may catch fewer misspellings but has the ability to turn uninspired prose into memorable prose consistently?" The people who are hiring editors aren't necessarily able to evaluate quality -- or don't care.
 The Business of Editing: Best Price Bids (An American Editor blog, 10-10-12). Invaluable tips for when you are one of many submitting a bid. Questions to ask, factors to consider, when not to bid, and why and when not to lower your bid.
 Academic Copyediting Rates: or, What to Expect When Hiring a Copyeditor (Wendy Belcher, Academic Copyediting, 10-30-11)
 Business of Editing: Lower Your Rate? (Rich Adin, American Editor, 7-1-13). See also Adin's Discounting Rates.
 Being Cheap Isnt Always the Best Choice (Rich Adin, The Digital Reader, 6-11-12)
 Thinking About Money: What Freelancers Need to Understand -- How to calculate your workday effective hourly rate (EHR) (Rich Adin, An American Editor, 10-6-10) Also from Rich Adin's Business of Editing, a series on how much to charge:
--- What Freelancers Need to Understand (American Editor, 10-6-10, an early piece on the "effective hourly rate," or EHR)
---What to charge (part I)
---Part II: Is that enough?,
---Part iii: Tracking the EHR
---What to Charge, Part IV (how to calculate the actual hourly rate, 8-14-13)
---What to Charge, Part V: Why Bother? "Tracking ones effective hourly rate (EHR) is a way to determine the health of ones business. It is also an alert system to tell us if and when we need to make adjustments in how we operate our business."
--- To Post or Not to Post Your Fee Schedule?
 Six-Figure Freelancer: How to Find, Price, and Manage Corporate Writing Assignments (Paul Lima, Kindle edition) Focuses on writing for corporate markets (including businesses, associations, government agencies, non-profits and other organizations).
 How to Charge: By the Project, by the Hour, or by the Word or Page? (Katharine O'Moore-Klopf, KOK Edit, 1-24-11)
 How Much Should I Charge? (Writers and Editors, Pricing Strategies, How to Set Rates and Fees, and Other Survival Basics---trends and rates for many types of work, in various fields)
 The Business of Editing: Light, Medium, or Heavy? (Rich Adin, An American Editor, 9-24-12)
 Guidelines for setting fees (EFA)
 Rate Survey (Bay Area Editors' Forum, 2005)
 Average Salaries for Writers and Editors (PoeWar 8-29-14)
 What can a writer or editor expect? Proofreader? Designer? Ghostwriter? Copywriter? Resume writer? (on setting fees for various types of creative work, Writers & Editors, Freelancing)

An important factor in estimating a fee for a project is your productivity rate (how long it will take you to edit something, typically in pages per hour). These may be helpful:
 Estimated pace of editing (range, Common Editorial Rates, Editorial Freelancers Association)
 Productivity Rates in Editing (Adrienne Montgomerie, Catchthesun.net)
 Kinds of editors/​editing and levels of edit (Writers and Editors blog)
 Benchmarks for Estimating Editing Speed by David W. McClintock (originally published in Corrigo: Newsletter of the STC's Technical Editing SIG (June 2002), pp. 1, 3.
On the subject of money and jobs--and foreign competition:
 Fury rises at Disney over use of foreign workers (Patrick Thibodeau, Computerworld, 4-29-15) A restructuring and H-1B use affect the Magic Kingdoms IT operations. This is a follow-up to this blog post: Remarkable Congressional Briefing on H-1B (Norman Matloff, "computer science professor at the University of California at Davis and a longtime critic of the H-1B program," Upon Closer Inspection blog, 4-14-15). Lobbyists admit (but not to the press) that H-1B displaces some Americans from STEM jobs.

Reference management systems automatically renumber references when they are moved around but endnotes need to be finalized before importing from Word to InDesign.
 Comparison of reference management software (Wikipedia page, tables comparing various reference management software, some free, some not)
 Cite Work Can Be Profitable (Richard Adin, The Business of Editing, An American Editor, 5-6-15) Charging per page of footnotes and using macros may increase your hourly earnings.
 Journals, References, & Dollars (Rich Adin, The Business of Editing, An American Editor, 3-2-15) "...there are tasks that scream for efficiency. Wildcard macros are one method and work very well for the tasks for which they are suited. A second method, which deals with references, is the EditTools Journals macro." See also Creating Multiple Journals Datasets Simultaneously (1-27-16)
 Citation and Reference Styles (various resources on footnotes, endnotes, documentation--including bibliography services such as BibMe, ReferenceChecker, NoteStripper, and QuickSite). (ReferenceChecker is no longer being sold.)
 Comparison of reference management software (Wikipedia)
 Edifix. Correct, link, and format your bibliography with one click--the online subscription-based bibliographic reference solution for publishers, service providers, editors, and authors. See What is Edifix? and What editorial styles are available in Edifix? (with example references). You can use it to color-highlight and automatically character/​paragraph-style lots of repetitive features.

 Reference Checker checks numerical (Vancouver) and name+date-style (Harvard and APA) references in Word files. Finds all name-date or numbered citations in a document and checks them against the references. When finished, it displays a list of matches and mismatches.
 Reference Citation Checking https:/​/​youtu.be/​GI7QdNXaGRI(Paul Beverley demo, YouTube) Macros for Writers and Editors (free download, Paul Beverley, Archive Publications, UK).
 Lyonizing Word: Deleting Extraneous Carriage Returns in Footnotes and Endnotes (Jack Lyon, on An American Editor 3-31-14)
If you find *one* macro that saves you time, that will help you face your
terror, and teach you that they are not difficult, as some people would have
you believe, says Jack. The truth is, you only need to be able to load one single macro, because loading the second macro is exactly the same process! And this process is explained in:
---My First Macro - Part 1 (YouTube, 6:04) How to load up your first couple of macros
---My First Macro - Part 2 (YouTube, 5:45) How to run macros
---Reference citation checking (YouTube, 7:45) Checking the citations of both Vancouver and Harvard references.

Solopreneur or Company (part iii) , part 3 of a series on whether to work solo or as part of a company, and what that means, on Rich Adin's blog An American Editor (thread: The Business of Editing). Here Adin talks about editors sharing work and roles on large projects, or sharing fees when one editor brings in the work that others help perform. See also part ii, in which Adin explains that company, in the sense he's using it, may simply mean "a cohesive group of editors who can work together when needed do so and present themselves to potential clients as having that capability." In part i Ruth Thaler-Carter guest blogs about why she prefers working alone.

Becoming an editorBecoming an Editor (Jennie, 3-16-05), from the blog This Crazy Industry, a weblog about the glamorous publishing industry: books, editing, writing, style, language, long hours, poor salaries (or no salaries), grant money, authors, and very few cocktail parties. Really solid advice about the skills and training you need to be an editor.

'Be Wrong as Fast as You Can' (Hugo Lindgren, editor of NY Times Magazine, in the magazine, 1-4-13). Fascinating essay on how, in figuring out he was great on idea-making but not on follow-through, Lindgren came to accept as natural his role as an editor instead of as the writer-creator he dreamed of being.) Here's the wonderful Charlie Rose interview with John Lasseter (12-2-11, Lasseter being director and chief creative officer at Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studies), in which Lasseter attributes the "Be Wrong" quotation to Andrew Stanton (Toy Story, Wall-E, Finding Nemo).

Black day for the blue pencil. Once they were key figures in literary publishing, respected by writers who acknowledged their contribution to shaping books. But, argues Blake Morrison in The Guardian, editors are now an endangered species (8-5-05)

CONSORT statement. Guidelines in the CONSORT (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) statement are used worldwide to improve the transparent reporting of randomized, controlled trials, enabling readers to understand a trial's design, conduct, analysis and interpretation, and to assess the validity of its results. It emphasizes that this can only be achieved through complete transparency from authors.

The Decline & Fall of Editorial Quality (Rich Adin, An American Editor, 3-8-17) Editors used to seek "work for university presses because editors were more concerned about the artisanal aspects of editing than about the financial aspects. That outlook changed as commercial publishers consolidated and began lowering/​stagnating their fees and university presses tried to maintain the fee disparity....an increasing number of error-riddled books are being published by both university and commercial presses. We are also beginning to see editors who have calculated and know their required effective hourly rate, and because they know their required rate, are turning down editing projects that do not offer sufficient compensation to meet that rate. Unfortunately, we are also seeing a parallel trend: the number of persons calling themselves editors is increasing and these editors advertise their willingness to work for a rate that is far too low to sustain life."

Edifying Editing by R. Preston McAfee (PDF file). Among the qualities of a good editor of a refereed journal, writes McAfee, co-editor of the American Economic Review:
 Having a vision on which to base decisions about what is published
 "Obsessive organization, processing work unrelentingly until it is done" -- a "clear the inbox" mentality.
 Having no personal agenda (no bias)
 Having thick skin (as authors will complain about your decisions)
 Being a super referee (respond quickly with thoughtful reports)-- a good quality in someone wanting to become top editor.
He also writes about common reasons papers are rejected.

Editing lives: Marisa Wikramanayake (this guest post on PublishEd Adelaide, 5-20-13, suggests how editorial workers can stay calm. "My point is that how much self-belief you have is not determined by whether youre an extrovert or introvert  you determine it for yourself, and I think that self-belief gets you through a lot of the fear, worry and stress that come with being an editor right here and now."

The Editor's Interest: Copyright or Not (An American Editor, 3-1-11, on claiming copyright for an edit, relinquished only on full payment for services rendered) "A question that sometimes arises, usually when an editor has difficulty getting paid for his or her work, is: What can the editor do to collect payment? Ive been a long-time advocate of the position that the editor has a copyright interest in the edited version of the manuscript, a card that the editor should play in payment disputes."

Effective Editing (PDF, transcript of a training exercise for the Fish & Wildlife Service). Instructor Michelle Baker (Corporate Writing Pro) makes excellent points:
 In a substantive edit "you are looking at the strength of the argument, the organization of the document, and the correctness and completeness of the data." A copy edit is the real, detailed-oriented examination of tone, style, and grammar: "you look at the mechanics, the punctuation, and the wording." Make clear (to yourself and the author) which you are doing.
 "When youre sitting alone in your office with the manuscript, your spotlight should be on the reader."
 To make meetings with the writer productive, "separate praise from criticism" and start with the praise. Structure your praise to the writer as "You" comments so the praise clearly goes to the writer: "You did a great job tackling a really complicated issue."
 Criticism goes to the document: Section three gave me some trouble. I was confused when I read section three. Paragraph five didnt seem to flow.
 "If youve reviewed a document and you found 25 mistakes, go back through those 25 and try to group them into categories. None of us can process 25 errors."
 Carol Fisher Saller, author of The Subversive Copy Editor has three cardinal rules for editing: "be careful, be transparent, and be flexible."

How to Make a Figures Manuscript (Adrienne Montgomerie, Copyediting, 6-6-16) "When a product contains illustrations, graphs, and other visuals, a separate file containing them and their related instructions is sent with the manuscript. This separate Figures Manuscript can then be shuttled along to the art and production departments to do their magic." Among practical tips: "Editors need to remember that they are communicating with a visual person, not a word person. The artists will follow the sample more closely than the written description."

Humor among peer reviewers. Cιsar Sαnchez, in his blog Twisted Bacteria, quotes from the annual December issue of Environmental Microbiology, which features humorous quotes made by peer reviewers while assessing manuscripts submitted to the journal.

New York Times Will Offer Employee Buyouts and Eliminate Public Editor Role (Daniel Victor, NY Times, 5-31-17) Our goal is to significantly shift the balance of editors to reporters at The Times, giving us more on-the-ground journalists developing original work than ever before, they said in the memo. Mr. Baquet and Mr. Kahn said that the savings generated by the reduction in editing layers would be used to hire as many as 100 more journalists.... The offer comes as The Times continues its shift from a legacy print operation to a more digitally focused newsroom....Mr. Sulzberger, in a newsroom memo, said the public editors role had become outdated. Our followers on social media and our readers across the internet have come together to collectively serve as a modern watchdog, more vigilant and forceful than one person could ever be, he wrote. Our responsibility is to empower all of those watchdogs, and to listen to them, rather than to channel their voice through a single office.
---'New York Times' Executive Editor On The New Terrain Of Covering Trump (Dave Davies, Fresh Air, NPR, 12-8-16) "I don't find covering his tweets confounding. I actually don't, even though many of them are inaccurate, as we said. I mean, I think that's, like, basic blocking and tackling journalism. The president says something, you fact-check it, you report it and you say whether or not it's accurate." ... "I authorized and pushed us to use lie for the first time in relation to Donald Trump when he finally acknowledged that he thought Barack Obama was born in the United States....A lie implies that it was done with complete, total knowledge that it was a falsehood and that the person pushed it despite all evidence against. And I think what Donald Trump pushed about President Barack Obama not having been born in the United States was a lie. And I think there's no question he knew it was a lie."

The peripatetic copy editor (Ruth Walker, Christian Science Monitor, 3-27-14). On the road, stuck in traffic, copyeditors tend to proofread bumper stickers and road signs and wonders why everyone can't distinguish between "mass nouns" and "count nouns" ("fewer" or r "less" emissions, "10 items or less" or "fewer." Not to mention which state abbreviations are right in which contexts.

Publishing: A helping hand (Karen Kaplan, NatureJobs.com, orig. pub'd in Nature 12-1-10). Can the growing number of manuscript-editing services turn a mediocre paper into a publishable one? A plug for the legitimate editing of scientific papers, with sidebars on Opportunities in editing and How to choose a manuscript-editing service. Writes Kaplan, "Prices  which vary depending on the level of service, the length of the paper and the turn around time  can be anywhere from $250 for a 6,000-word paper with a 14- to 21-day turnaround to $5,000 for a 12,000-word paper with a 48-hour turnaround."

The Rise and Fall of the English Sentence (July Sedivy, Nautilus, 11-16-17) The Declaration of Independence Is Hard to Read. The surprising forces influencing the complexity of the language we speak and write. Sentences like the opening line of the Declaration of Independence simply do not occur in conversation....We utter the first syllables of a sentence while taking a leap of faith that well be able to choose the right words en route....The unpredictable aspects of language, the things you just have to know, may be especially slippery for the adult mind.

33 Struggles Only Copy Editors Will Understand (Emmy Favilla and Megan Paolone, Buzzfeed, 10-16-14) 1. You are literally blinded by pain any time you see is or be lowercased in a title. And yeah, you dont use literally figuratively.

Copyeditor's Typographic Oath (a set of copyeditors' commandments, Erin Brenner, Copyediting). Do no harm. Respect the writer . Don't be a search-and-replace editor. Look it up. He who pays makes the rules. That is some of them! See also Should You Be a Dog-Whistle Copyeditor? (Brenner, Copyediting, 9-25-12) "A dog-whistle copyeditor takes the time to edit the copy to such a fine degree that few people will notice the differences."

What an Author Should Give an Editor (Rich Adin, An American Editor, 5-31-12). The things an editor needs to know about a manuscript to do the job well and efficiently, without a lot of back-and-forth Q&As.

When editorial project managers expect too much (Hazel Bird, The Wordstitch blog, 5-22-18) "Pie-in-the-sky expectations introduce risk into a project. Project managers should be reducing risk, not introducing it....The best results are realized when the roles and stages of a project are carefully joined up and everyone is doing their appropriate bit....Effectively managing a project involves asking as many questions as you answer."

Working with self-publishing authors. Part 1: an industry of opportunity (Sophie Playle, for Society for Editors and Proofreaders blog, UK, 1-23-15). Part 2: expectations and implementation "The number one thing to remember about self-publishing authors is that most of them do not know much about the editing industry. Their main job is to write, after all. Theyre often aware that they need editorial help to self-publish professionally, but are not sure exactly what this entails.Many writers will think they just need a quick proofread to catch any typos when the reality is that most would benefit from a development edit and a copy-edit first. These terms are often unfamiliar to writers, and since there are so many editors offering slightly different variations of the same service (which is also often called something slightly different), a little confusion can only be expected....Take a look at a sample of the work  this is crucially important. Remember: there are no gatekeepers here, so the quality of work will vary greatly."

Do you want to hire (or be) a developmental editor, substantive editor, copyeditor, production editor, assignment editor, or proofreader? Read up on the different functions:
 Kinds of editors and levels of edit--what every writer should know (with links to material on levels and types of editing; fiction editing; copyediting; proofreading; newspaper editing; technical editing; freelance editing; the editor-author relationship; whether editors are valued and valuable; and becoming an editor)
 Why Are You Hiring a Professional Editor? (Rich Adin, An American Editor, 3-5-14) For those who think they might skip this step. Main messages: Not everyone can be a good editor. Peer group editing is not the same as using a professional editor, professional editors are skilled artisans worth more than a bottom-scraping fee, and the editor who has successfully edited a romance novel is not necessarily the editor who can successfully edit a large manuscript on cancer genetics. Different skills are needed for different projects.
 How Star Wars Was Saved in the Edit (YouTube, Rocket Jump Film School, 18 minutes and worth watching.) A video essay exploring how Star Wars' editors recut and rearranged Star Wars (effectively creating the rhythm and pacing we saw on the screen): A New Hope to create the cinematic classic it became. In a sense, this shows (in the film world) what developmental editing can also do with written material. (In the hands of a good professional editor, it is far more than catching typos.)
 Why photo shoots need editors too (Julia Sandford-Cooke, SfEP, 1-13-15), Excellent overview of a position most of us don't think about, and should.
 Guidelines for Ethical Editing of Theses /​ Dissertations (download PDF, Editors Canada)
 How should I brief a copy-editor?, followed by How should I brief a proofreader? (SfEP, UK, with advice to clients on what to include when you send a job to a copyeditor or proofreader). See also What should I look for in a copy-editor or proofreader?, keeping in mind that SfEP is geared to British audience.
 Becoming an Editor (from the blog, This Crazy Industry)
 Editing Fiction. Links to Carolyn Haley's excellent series of pieces on editing fiction on An American Editor. See especially (scroll down for) the parts on The Subjectivity of Editing Fiction.
 What they think about when they think about editing (John E. McIntyre, Baltimore Sun, 8-22-15) All the things good editors do and why you should not expect them to come cheap.
 Interview with a TV (Copy) Editor (Adrienne Montgomerie, Copyeditor, 3-17-15) Crosswords puzzle editing led Duncan McKenzie into other fields, including TV. On Train 48, there were no captions to check, but, with, over 300 episodes, we had a major challenge in keeping track of the information about each character. Actors improvised their dialogue, so, after each episode, we'd have to record key facts, and integrate that into the current database of facts about each character.
 Style Sheet: A Conversation with My Copyeditor (Edan Lepucki, The Millions, 2-7-14) An enlightening Q&A with copyeditor Susan Bradanini Betz, both for copyeditors and those they may edit. Also a useful style sheet. Says Betz: "When I copyedit, I get closer to the manuscript than I was ever able to as an acquisitions editor. I read every single word, looking at each word and tracking the syntax, not skimming over sentences. Its not my job as a copyeditor to suggest big-picture changes or comment on quality, so I am focused on the story and the language at the word and sentence level. I keep the reader in mind and try to anticipate what might be confusing or problematic; I check facts and dates, track characters and events for consistency; and I do the most thorough read I possibly can, coming away with an in-depth understanding of the work that wasnt possible for me in acquisitions." (Acquisitions editors sign authors to write books for their publishing company. Developmental editors edit and manage books from the point of signing to the final draft. Production editors manage books from final draft to publication. But some book editors handle all three of those stages. Generally, however, they farm out the copyediting to freelance copyeditors who check for consistent style, correct grammar and spelling (or, with fiction, appropriate incorrectness). Technical editors generally have good knowledge of a subject area and review a manuscript for technical accuracy.)
 What Does Editing Look Like? Behind the (Crime) Scene at the Editors Screen (Corina Koch MacLeod and Carla Douglas, on The Book Designer, 9-10-14) And the visuals clearly demonstrate the principles explained.
 Professional Editorial Standards (2009) by Editors Association of Canada. Downloadable PdF at http:/​/​www.editors.ca/​files/​public/​PES-2009-FINAL.pdf. Spells out what is done in generally recognized editorial stages, in five parts: The fundamentals of editing; structural editing; stylistic editing; copy editing; proofreading.
 How I Learned to Edit and My Thoughts on the Author Aspirant (Len Epp, LeanPub, interviews Jane Friedman on Backmatter, 5-10-17) Listen to audio and/​or read the transcript. About the long process editors go through to become good editors, and about author aspirants and changing times, as well. For example: Long ago, writers were "born to privilege," and could afford time to write, or they had patrons. Then some could live on book sales. "But that flipped yet again, where, for instance it was Mark Twain who - his most successful book wasn't sold through bookstores, but it was sold door to door - peddled, like a vacuum cleaner or something. And at the time, people kind of looked down their noses. Like, proper authors with proper books are sold in proper bookstores. They are not sold door-to-door like a vacuum, or some sort of weird smarmy cure or potion. But that's where he saw his greatest financial gain, in supporting that effort....you find lots of interesting things happen if they're willing to not let status anxiety take over their thinking in terms of how the book gets to the reader..." and so on. More of Jane Friedman's good insights.
 Copy Editor vs Manuscript Editor vs . . .: Venturing onto the Minefield of Titles (Cheryl Iverson, Council of Science Editors, March-April 2004) No two publications use the same terms to describe the same work, and in a discussion among editors "It was the issue of substantive editing and working closely with the author that most often was key to characterizing the work that should be called "manuscript editor" or "author's editor" rather than "copy editor." And some preferred "technical editing" to "substantive editing." For some, the distinction depends on to whom the editor owes allegiance (the author or the publisher) and to some it depends on whether the editing is done before or after acceptance. Or is the editor's obligation to the reader? Does it matter if the edit is light or substantive? An interesting discussion and a reminder that freelance editors must clarify what their clients expect their scope of work to be.
 Author editing (Wikipedia) "Although term "authors' editor" is little known, even by persons whose work could accurately be called author editing, it is not new but has been in use at least since the 1970s. The roots of this profession seem to lie in the arena of medical editing in the US." That type of editor is getting a manuscript (typically academic) ready for submission. If you work with self-published authors wise enough to hire an editor, it may help to use both terms: author's editor and copy editor.
 In a Changing World of News, an Elegy for Copy Editors (Lawrence Downes, NY Times, 6-16-08) The job hasnt disappeared yet, but it is swiftly evolving.
 Copyediting or Proofreading? Getting the Most for Your Editing Dollar (Corina Koch MacLeod and Carla Douglas, on The Book Designer, 5-13-15). How is copyediting different from proofreading and why proofreading is not usually enough for a self-published work.
Proofreading could mean reading final copy against marked-up copy; or it could mean reading final copy for minor errors of spelling, punctuation, layout, etc.--and pointing out errors. Copy editors work at an earlier stage of production, and may also be concerned with more substantive editing. In terms of payment, proofreaders are low on the totem pole.
 Donna Tartt and Michael Pietsch (editor Michael Pietssch and novelist Donna Tartt in a Slate Book Review author-editor conversation). Donna Tartt does not like being "standardized."
 Editing and revising fiction (Writers and Editors)
 The 3 Stages of Copyediting: I  The Processing Stage (Rich Adin, An American Editor, 2010). Adin explains: "Mechanically, the copyediting process can be divided into 3 stages: the processing stage, where the manuscript is prepared for the copyediting process; the copyediting stage in which the manuscript is actually copyedited; and, the proofing stage, where the manuscript is checked for the misses that occurred during the copyediting stage. Adin talks here about using macros to speed up the process. Part II: The Copyediting Stage (8-4-10). And Part III: Proofreading.
 Some Copyediting Terms (Wendy Belcher, Academic Copyediting)
 Thinking Fiction: An Overview of the World of Fiction Copyediting (Amy Schneider, An American Editor, 9-8-14) A checklist of what you will and won't do as a good fiction copyeditor.
 The Mind-set of the Fiction Copyeditor (Amy J. Schneider, An American Editor, 10-6-14)
 What You Need to Know to Edit Fiction (Erin Brenner, on An American Editor, 8-25-14)
 Editing and revising fiction, excellent articles targeted to fiction editing,
 Two Slate editors debate their very different editing philosophies. (Dan Kois, Laura Helmuth, interviewed by Jennifer Lai, Slate Plus, available free for a while, 5-12-14). Two Slate editors debate their very different editing philosophies.
 Interviews with, and profiles of, agents and editors

Are you a writer or an editor? The following two entries, from The Open Notebook, provide insights into the main differences between writing and editing, especially about science. "Writers and editors work together all the time, but the two clans are somewhat mysterious to one another. Mutually suspicious, even. How do you know which career path you should specialize in? And how do editors become editors, anyway? Ann Finkbeiner and Laura Helmuth asked several journalists to describe the differences between writers and editors."
 Are you an editor or a writer? Part I: The writers. (posted by Christie Aschwanden, The Open Notebook, 1-16-13).
 Are you an editor or a writer? Part II: The editors. (posted by Christie Aschwanden, The Open Notebook, 1-16-13).
 33 Struggles Only Copy Editors Will Understand (Emmy Favilla and Megan Paolone, Buzzfeed, 10-16-14) 10. You silently judge people for not knowing the differences between a hyphen, an en dash, and an em dash. 6. You evaluate potential mates on their ability to correctly use fewer vs. less than.

The styles that clients may expect you to know (or have access to the style manual for) are primarily: Chicago, AP, APA, AMA, MLA, Microsoft, CBE/​CSE. Books purchased through Amazon links on this website return a small commission to us, which helps us rationalize spending too much time working on the site!

Developmental Editing: A Handbook for Freelancers, Authors, and Publishers (primarily for editing nonfiction) by Scott Norton. Also available online at Scribd. Norton "creates several extended narrative examples and uses them to illustrate different aspects of the process he follows when working with manuscripts. The narrative examples are sufficiently detailed to illustrate his processes yet much easier to work with than actual manuscripts."

 Editing by Design by Jan V. White (well illustrated book on graphic design through which even wordsmiths can learn the value of white space etc.)

 Edit Yourself, by Bruce Ross-Larson (how to edit bureaucratic flab into clearer, crisper, and more effective sentences); Bruce also has a series of workbooks for writing courses at the World Bank and similar organizations

** The Fiction Editor, The Novel, and the Novelist, by Thomas McCormack. Tom was a mentor and is a friend, so I may be biased, but can quote someone else as recommending the book "because he is so good at explaining what makes someone a good editor for a particular manuscript. "

 Garner's Modern American Usage by Bryan A. Garner (the very best guide to word usage, for such things as the difference between "historic" and "historical" -- an invaluable tool for wordsmiths)

Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction by Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd (also good on the author-editor relationship). See The Special Relationship by Scott Stossel (WSJ book review, 1-17-13). A Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and his longtime editor offer a guide to the craft of nonfiction -- and a look at an excellent author-editor relationship.

 Words into Type (3rd Edition) by Marjorie E. Skillin (better organized that the Chicago Style Manual, and very useful for explaining the process of book editing and production, though way behind the times on technological changes)

Sometimes the editor helps create a piece, by carving away the flab and helping to find the artistic center within. Sometimes such heavy editing does not have such felicitous results. Among the most interesting examples of heavy editing in literature:

 F. Scott Fitzgerald's heavy cutting of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (see, for example, The Textual History of 'The Sun Also Rises' by Carmen Corral (Sigma Tau Delta) and various accounts of both the editing and its repercussions, including Fitzgerald, Hemingway And The Sun Also Rises (Literary Traveler, 7-12-99)
 Max Perkins' heavy editing and reorganizing of Thomas Wolfe's long, long novel manuscripts (including Look Homeward, Angel) is one example covered in Max Perkins: Editor of Genius by A. Scott Berg
 Gatsby Before He Was Great (Jimmy So, Newsweek, 5-6-13). "in a recent movie version, Luhrmann reportedly enlisted 'Trimalchio' to shape a 'darker' Gatsby, and were told that DiCaprio carried a copy of it everywhere he went."
 Ezra Pound's beautiful editing of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland(Eliot's title was He Do the Police in Different Voices . (See interesting account in this Wikipedia entry.
 Gordon Lish's editing of Raymond Carver's short fiction--the subject of at least two interesting magazine pieces:
---The Carver Chronicles (D.T. Max's long fascinating 1998 piece in the NY Times Magazine about Gordon Lish's extremely heavy editing of Raymond Carver's early fiction) and its effect (good and bad) on Carver's short fiction. Raymond Carver's stories were at the center of American literary life in the 80's. Now they are at the heart of a battle over his legacy: Were some of them the product of collaboration? And why all the secrecy surrounding his archives?
---The Two Raymond Carvers (Giles Harvey, NY Review of Books, 5-27-10)
---"Looking for Raymond Carver" (A.O. Scott, NY Review of Books, August 12, 1999), subscription or purchase required
---"Rough Crossings: The Cutting of Raymond Carver" (Simon Armitage, The New Yorker, 12-24-07). (For some reason I have "David Remnick, unsigned" in my notes--anyone know why?)

It is easy enough to make an index, as it is to make a broom of odds and ends, as rough as oat straw; but to make an index tied up tight, and that will sweep well into the corners, isnt so easy. ~ John Ruskin
A reference or teaching book is only as good as its index. ~Julia Child

It usually pays to join an organization that provides searchable listings of members that job-providers (or contract providers) can look through. (See Organizations for Editors and Publishing Professionals) And sometimes it pays just to join an organization UNRELATED to publishing but about a subject you are passionate about -- and let everyone in that organization know that you edit or proofread or write for a living. (You may be the only editor those people will ever hear about.) People with money to spend and specialized skills that don't include wordsmithing don't have time to go through gazillions of resumes from people with limited skills, so they like the winnowing out that a targeted membership or a specialized directory helps provide. Budget to be listed in several places. As my old friend Alex Bespaloff used to tell me, "You have to spend money to make money." If you're looking for editing work with firms outside of publishing, you probably want to approach a company's communications or publications manager and editor, or if there are none, staff in the the marketing department.

 The Question of Free Sample Edits, Part 1 (Jamie Chavez, Copyediting, 3-3-15) (reasons not to offer free sample edits to prospective clients) and Part II (3-10-15) on reasons to consider them, in certain circumstances.
 No More Missus Nice Gal (Jamie Chavez, Read>Play>Edit, 1-12-15)
 Why Give a Sample Edit (Lillie Ammann 2-28-11) A "sample edit isnt appropriate for a very small project. But for a book-length manuscript from a first-time client, I insist on doing a sample editfor my benefit and the benefit of the prospective client."

When you give caption copy to graphic designers, they will often type in the caption (especially in connection with a graphic) rather than cut and paste from the copy you give them. Many of the typos in final versions will be in re-typed captions, headings, and labels. So proofread the final against original copy.

"Alas, there is no twelve-step program for us. We must learn to live with our affliction. Perhaps we could even attempt to extract some social benefit from it by offering our faultfinding services on a pro bono basis. Had a Fadiman or a Bethell been present in 1986, when the New York law firm of Haight, Gardner, Poor & Havens misplaced a decimal point in a ship's mortgage, we could have saved its client more than $11 million. Had we been present in 1962, when a computer programmer at NASA omitted a hyphen from Mariner 1's flight program, we could have prevented the space probe from having to be destroyed when it headed off course, at a cost to taxpayers of more than $7 million." ~ Anne Fadiman, from "Insert a caret" (edited from Inset a Carrot), in Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

The Secret Life of an Obsessive Airbnb Host (George Tzortzis, Narratively, 5-22-14). Determined to quit his tired government job, one D.C. office drone saves $25,000 by renting his apartment nightly and secretly sleeping on the office floor. This allows him to try the life of a freelance copywriter and copy editor. But things don't go quite as planned.

"No compulsion in the world is stronger than the urge to edit someone else's document."
~H. G. Wells

"As we sat down, he[T.S. Eliot] said, `Tell me, as one editor to another, do you have much author trouble?' I could not help laughing, he laughed in returnhe had a booming laughand that was the beginning of our friendship. His most memorable remark of the day occurred when I asked him if he agreed with the definition that most editors are failed writers, and he replied: `Perhaps, but so are most writers.' "
~ Robert Giroux in T. S. Eliot: The Man and his Work ( from Giroux's `A Personal Memoir,' reprinted from Sewanee Review, vol. 74 (1966)

i before e... except when you run a feisty heist on a weird beige foreign neighbor.
--Grammarly.com, on Facebook. With this comment: i before e, except after c, as long as it rhymes with meNicholas Marshall

Missouri Rewrites Plot, Rehiring Editor in Chief of the University Press (John Eligon, NY Times, 10-5-12). When 41 authors who had works published by the university press asked for the rights to their works back unless the editor-in-chief, Mr. Clair Willcox, was rehired, the University of Missouri reversed its plans to close the university's publishing house and re-hired the editor.

"I submit as a law of editorial physics that the author's desire to include a fact in her narrative is directly proportional to the effort she expended to find it out, not to its relevance."
~ Peter Ginna, When journalists become authors: a few cautionary tips (Nieman Storyboard)

"Helene [Pleasants] had no literary theories  she had literary values. She valued clarity and transparency. She had nothing against style, if it didn't distract from the material. Her blue pencil struck at redundancy, at confusion, at authorial vanity, at the wrong and the false word, at the unearned conclusion. She loved good writing, therefore she loved the reader: good writing did not cause the reader to stumble over meaning."
~Dorothy Gallagher, "What My Copy Editor Taught Me"